


All the bones in the human body

by straight_up_gay



Category: Doctor Who
Genre: Baby Gay Feelings, F/F, Like There's World-Saving And Aliens But It's Mostly Just Flirting, Some Very Oblivious Reactions To Flirting, taking a break from writing about space gays to ... write about different space gays
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-07
Updated: 2017-09-07
Packaged: 2018-12-24 22:22:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,418
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12022260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/straight_up_gay/pseuds/straight_up_gay
Summary: Martha Jones hates Rose Tyler, long after she's stopped loving the Doctor, for reasons she can't understand(won't understand)





	All the bones in the human body

The first time Martha sees Rose Tyler, it's in a dream.

In her dream, Martha's at the public pool near her parents' old house, the concrete damp under her feet. The smell's all the same - chlorine, sunscreen, the vague damp smell of children who have probable peed themselves without their parents noticing it - but there's no one else there.

There's no one else, and then there is someone, a blonde lady wearing a bathing suit standing over on the diving board.

Martha walks towards her, heavy and slow like walking always is in dreams, and then stops when she sees the familiar face, all big doe eyes and soft lips.

She stops dead. "No," she says, because it's bloody unfair, isn't it, that Rose Tyler won't even let her have her dreams to herself.

Rose, looks at her, lips parted in surprise, perfect eyebrow quirking up. "No cause why?" she asks. "I've not even talked to you yet!"

"It's been a year," she hisses. "It's been a year since I've been back on Earth. I don't even want the Doctor any more. I've moved on! So why'm I dreaming about you again?"

Rose laughs, and Martha's so mad she wants to be sick. But you can't be ill in dreams, or at least she can't, so she just glares.

The Doctor didn't like to talk about Rose a lot, but Martha had needed to know. So, late one night, she'd charmed the TARDIS into showing her Rose Tyler's image. She'd regretted it immediately. The beautiful woman with the slightly mournful smile had made Martha sick to look at, sick with something that was maybe envy and was maybe hate. But she'd come back to look at her, every night, like when her little nephew lost his teeth and wouldn't stop sticking his tongue in the hole.

"You're not dreaming about me," Rose says, and her image wavers. "I'm dimension-hopping, aren't I, trying to get back to your Earth."

Nothing she'd said made sense. "You're in my head! You can't be hopping dimensions, this is my dream! And I want you to stay out."

She folds her arms across her chest and gives the Dream-Rose her Patented Martha Jones Stare. It was the one she uses often enough at her job when dealing with a UNIT official who won't take orders from her because of her age or her gender or the colour of her skin. Ten times out of nine, it works.

It doesn't work. Rose only smiles back, cheeky and infuriating. "And what's a dream but another kind of world? I'm glad to hear I'm getting closer, at least." 

She pulls some kind of gadget out of her boot (why's she wearing boots with a bathing suit, then?) and clicks the button on the side of it. "According to your thermodynamic temporal signature, I need to correct my course. Thanks for the help, sweetheart."

Martha's brain still isn't working right. "If you're dimension-hopping, then why wear a bloody bather for it?" She gestures at Rose's swimsuit, a little two-piece with cherries on it that annoys Martha beyond measure.

Rose's grin turns devilish. "This is your dream, Martha, isn't it? In dream worlds, we dimension-hoppers have to dress for the weather, so to speak. You'd be better off asking yourself why I'm in a bathing suit, then."

And she phases out of Martha's dream with the same sound the TARDIS made, scraping against the fabric of the world.

Martha wakes up annoyed and curiously warm, her mouth sticky. She can't get back to sleep for the rest of the night, no matter how she tries. And no matter how hard she tries, she can't understand why she's so disappointed.

***

The second time she sees Rose Tyler, it's in the middle of an alien crisis, one of the ones the Doctor isn't around to sort out. 

It's fine, because it's a bog-standard alien visit, some Silurian crackpot posing as the Vice President of the United States. What's annoying is that he's making it just hard enough to mop up without being properly inventive about it.

Chasing him down the hall of the UN building, Martha snorts. She'd never say she missed the Master, but at least he was a proper world-destroying megalomaniac. This alien? This one was a sad pretender for the throne.

But he was damn good at running, better than Martha, even with her hours on the treadmill. She loses sight of him, down one of the corridors, and she curses herself, trying to speed up. 

She rounds the corner into the boardroom, prepared for almost anything.

What she's not prepared for is Rose Tyler, holding the Silurian at gunpoint with a weapon the size of her torso.

"Hello, sweetheart," Rose says to her, smiling even as she's got the suited alien in her crosshairs. He tries to run away while her attention is diverted, and she nudges him with her gun. "Don't try to pull one over on me just because my attention's on the girl, Mister."

She turns back to Martha again, with a smile almost too big for her face. "Good to see you in the world of the living."

"Thank you," Martha says, gritting it out between her teeth, because her mum had taught her to be polite when she got a favour, even if she'd rather spit in the person's eye.

Rose laughs. "Don't fuss about it. You did all the work here. Following your suspicions, finding out this big bastard, tricking him into exposing himself. That's proper brilliant. I just managed to show up in time to help you with the finale."

She's being kind! She's being polite! There's no reason for this big, prickly ball of irritation in Martha's throat.She's the sensible one of the family, the one who's used to being the bigger person because god knew someone had to be.

"Well, thank you anyways," Martha says. "Look, I'm sorry for what happened -"

Rose laughs. "Don't mention it, sweetheart. Dreams are funny things, and they don't always go the way we plan them to."

She prods the Silurian in the back of his head, and nods at Martha. "This big guy is gonna sing like a parakeet, because I promised him that if he didn't, the Bad Wolf was going to come eat him up."

The Vice President (well, the former vice president, at this point) shudders, and Martha's easily able to put cuffs on him. 

"The Bad Wolf," she repeats, under her breath. Nothing makes sense, and she's not used to feeling stupid.

"Look," she asks, desperately, as Rose starts to fade out of her world, "you are the Doctor's Rose, aren't you?"

Rose's voice fades in and out as she phases away. "No. Sweetheart, I'm not the Doctor's anything. I'm the Bad Wolf, I create myself."

And she's gone, leaving a Rose-shaped hole in the world, and a very frightened Silurian.

"Please take me to be arrested," he says, and Martha almost laughs.

Martha Jones has never been satisfied with unanswered questions. Even as a kid, she'd wanted to know what the tendons in her arm moved the way they did, how her eyes turned light into colour, the names of all her bones.

She's going to solve the Mystery of Rose Tyler if she dies trying.

***

The third time Martha sees Rose Tyler, it's in the middle of a warzone, or something like it.

Bloody, bloody Sontarans, faces like potatoes and only half as many brains, but they can do some serious damage when they want to.

And now they've gone, and left a lot of very frightened people behind. Including the people Martha's with right now, the band of genius teenagers that Rattigan had assembled to help him with his glorious mission. Only, they're looking just like regular teenagers now, scared and very alone without any proper adults around.

One of them's having an anxiety attack on the floor, a boy who can't be more than fifteen, and the rest of them are crowded around him.

Martha sighs, and says, in her firmest voice, "Clear off. I know you're trying to help him, but you're not."

The teens at her, then slowly start edging back. She asks the closest one, "What's his name?"

The girl, a moonfaced, gentle-looking older teen, says, "It's Omar, Miss."

"Thanks. And it's Doctor, by the way. Doctor Jones."

Her handlers had protested that she was above this kind of work now, that she was a UNIT official and not a doctor anymore. She'd shot back that she'd earned her degree and that she'd be a doctor until the day she died, and if they knew what was best for them, they'd let her doctor in peace.

She looks down at the boy. She doesn't always know what to do when she's dealing with UNIT politics, but right now, the future stretches out clear in front of her, a road with only one possible destination.

"Right then, Omar." He's got his hands over his eyes, and he's taking little, uneven, panicky breaths. "I'm a doctor, and I'm here to help."

He looks up at her, eyes runny and red, mouth tearing around sobs. "M-my family. They're in Central London." He tries to get out more, but he just dry-heaves.

"Well, before you can help them, you have to help yourself. Big breaths. I'll count you down."

She's just doing her third set of breaths with him when she hears a familiar voice. "You're looking busy, sweetheart."

She jumps to see Rose Tyler standing in front of her, dressed in civvies.

She has a lot of questions, but she's a doctor first. "Rose, can you get one of the kids to call Omar's family. I don't know if the lines are down, but you can use my cell. It's UNIT special." She tosses it up to Rose, who catches it effortlessly.

She likes that about Rose, the way she does what needs to be done without waiting to see whether or not it was her responsibility. Maybe the Doctor's companions all had to be like that.

She shifts her attention back down to Omar. "Now, then, we've got someone calling your folks, so we'll be able to know they're safe soon. For now, the best thing you can do for them is work on slowing down your breathing, so you'll be able to talk to them when they come on, okay?"

He nods. After a few more minutes, and a few false starts, she's managed to get his breathing down to regular levels. "Good job]," she says, encouragingly. She shouts to the teens milling about to the side. "Anyone got in contact with his family?"

The girl from earlier nods, clearly in the middle of fielding an inquiry from the other end of the line.

"Good. As soon as you can, pass the phone over to him." She pauses, because she knows how parents can be. "And tell them that they shouldn't work him up."

When the boy gets on the phone with his family, the tension drains out of his shoulders. "Grandmum," he says, giving the group a watery little smile."I'm so, so happy to hear from you. Is Fawzia okay?"

Martha looks back to see Rose behind her. Now that the immediate danger's over, she wants answers. 

"Why do you keep doing this?" she asks. "I mean, I'm not complaining, but it's unusual, you need to admit. You showing up all the time." She keeps her voice low, because she doesn't want to panic the kids even more with a magic dimension-hopping lady.

Rose brushes hair out of her face. "Us companions of the Doctor should stick together, we're too weird to hang about with anyone else. Besides, you've gone and become my link into this world, haven't you?"

"What do you mean? And what's all this Bad Wolf rubbish?"

Because she's been seeing Bad Wolf everywhere around her since Rose mentioned it to her; in graffiti, in the papers, in the stupid masks that delinquent kids wear in the bad bits of town. Even once in a dream, when a beautiful wolf with golden eyes had come to her side and let her pet it.

Rose continued. "Oh, I am sorry about the Bad Wolf thing. It's a little disconcerting, if you haven't seen it before. I looked into the heart of the Tardis once, so I'm just a little bit like the Doctor, aren't I, threaded through this universe like a virus."

A crunching sound on the driveway lets her know that someone's coming up the driveway. Oh, hell, it's the police, and they don't look happy.

"Not this way!" Martha yells, seeing the teens shrink back as the police approach. "This property is under the jurisdiction of UNIT right now."

One of the officers, helmet over his face, says, "We have reason to believe that one or more of the people here were involved in the worldwide ATMOS gas leak.

She stands up, between them and the officers, arms crossed in front of her chest, feet solidly on the ground. She need to handle this fast, before any of the teens start to panic.

"Well, he's dead now, and the rest of them didn't know about it, and did I mention that this property is under UN control at the moment?"

The officers don't back off, but they don't come forward, either. That;s the trick with military and police; if you talk like you have more than the right to be doing what you're doing, they often assume you do."

"That means, if you aren't off this property in under three minutes, I'll personally take this all the way up, starting with you, and working up to your superiors, and your superiors' superiors, and..."

"We'll go then, Miss," the front officer says, motioning for his men to fall into line behind him.

"That's Doctor to you," she says, and turns back to the teens.

"When Omar's done his call, you can all have your turns. I trust you to figure out a fair system."

The Doctor had been angry at her for being an official, for wearing a uniform. And maybe he didn't need any of those things to help people, but he never stuck around afterwards to tie up the loose ends. Sometimes, she wishes he'd stay and deal with the fallout. Maybe then he'd see why the uniform was important, to announce to frightened people that Someone Was Taking Care Of It and to stop the idiots from getting all the power.

And Rose is looking at her with a look she can't quite read. It makes her nervous, and warm. With the sun behind her head, she looks like one of the Bad Wolf murals Martha's seen. It's the one that was on the Bellamy estate, the one that had Rose Tyler surrounded by flowers, a golden light around her and in her eyes. It had been so lovely, she'd wanted to snap a picture of it, but she hadn't had the chance before the council painted over the side of the flat.

"The TARDIS whispers things to me, sometimes, across the bit of me that's still linked to her. She looks out for you, so I've seen some of the things you've done."

"Like what?" Martha asks, defensively. Her walkie-talkie buzzes, but she ignores it, figuring that she's earned a little time to ask questions. The idea of Rose knowing things about her worries at her mind.

The teens are in a whispering circle, and the girl from before is rubbing little circles on Omar's back.

Rose Tyler's mouth quirks up. "Oh, nothing big. Just saving the world from itself, over and over again."

Martha looks down, embarrassed. She isn't the Doctor, but damn it if she isn't a good doctor nonetheless. "I try," she says quietly.

"Besides, you gave the Doctor a proper telling-off when you left him. He needs more of those. Reminds him not to be such a big, careless baby sometimes."

Martha laughs. It's hard to hate Rose Tyler when she's making jokes at the Doctor's expense, her mouth drawn back in a big, cheeky grin.

"You're going to stay out of my dreams now, right?" Martha's dreams right now are confusing, disconcerting, only half-remembered, and she doesn't want Rose Bloody Tyler poking through them, not even if she's nicer than expected.

"God, yeah! A girl likes a little privacy for her dreams," Rose says, and winks at Martha in a way she doesn't understand. Or, maybe, that she doesn't want to understand.

This time, she can see Rose starting to fade, the swell and pull of her universe drawing her back in.

"Wait," she says. "If you live in a parallel world, is there another Martha Jones there?" The idea of meeting another her is strangely exciting, even as it's nerve-wracking.

Rose laughs again as she fades, head tipped back towards the sky. "Sweetheart, I can tell you, there's no one else like you in any universe, and that's a fact."

And, damn it, she fades before Martha has the chance to ask her what she means by that.

***

The fourth time Martha sees Rose Tyler, the world is ending. Again. It would be nice if the world would stop ending long enough for Martha to ask out one of the nice men from her amateur arts class.

But Rose is there, and the Doctor is there, and Martha is happy, really happy, that she found him. Only there's a shooting pain through her side that she can't take the time to examine.

Rose hugs her hard. "Martha Jones," she says. "Oh, you're good. You anchored me right in this world, and brought me back in time to help save it."

Martha grins, stomach flipping. "Us companions need to stick together, right?"

The TARDIS is in flight, and the Doctor is talking to, well, himself, and himself is talking right back to the Doctor. There's two of them, three if you count Donna Noble. Whatever else she's feeling, because all of it's confusing, she's happy to see Donna again. The Doctor needs someone like her around, someone loud and kind and brave, who wouldn't hesitate to call him out if he got out of line.

"About that," Rose says. "Something bad's going to happen."

"How do you mean?"

Rose's face is grave and solemn, like an ancient statue. "I hope I'm wrong. But being something like the Doctor, when you're mostly like a human - well, people can't take it. I couldn't take it. The Doctor had to regenerate to save me, and I don't know if regenerating will be enough to help her."

"Is there anything we can do?" Martha whispers. It doesn't seem fair, the idea of anything happening to Donna.

Rose shakes her head, not looking at Martha. "But we'll need to look after her, if something does go wrong, okay?"

Martha nods, watching Donna laugh.

She doesn't understand any of it, any of what she's feeling or what Rose is saying. And when the Doctor sends Rose Tyler home, to be with the Other Doctor, Martha goes home and cries, still not understanding why.

***

The fifth time Martha sees Rose Tyler, she's just finished telling off her dad for not showing up to Tish's soiree. 

 

It wasn't even like he was trying to be a berk! He was just dumb enough that he actually thought it was okay to go off with some peroxide lady twenty years younger than him instead of going to the crowning achievement of his youngest daughter's life.

So she jumps to see Rose Tyler trying to buy chips from the vendor in front of her, looking like any ordinary Londoner.

"Rose," she asks, this time finally the one to surprise the other woman. "What are you doing here?"

Rose blinks, and then laughs. "Trust me to slip over to the wrong world without even noticing," she says.

She holds up the cash in front of her, and Martha can see that it's slightly different, bluer and featuring a hot-air balloon in the background.

"But how are you here?" Martha asks, trying to squash the weird hope ballooning in her own chest. "I thought the Doctor said the worlds were sealed -"

Rose laughed, quick and bright. "Well, that's the Doctor. Don't get me wrong, he's very clever, but sometimes he doesn't know things as well as he thinks he does."

There's something behind that, something Martha isn't getting quite yet. "And how is the Doctor? Your Doctor, I mean. Wait, that's confusing. The Human Doctor."

Rose's smile goes wistful. "We don't always keep up to date, so I'm not sure what they're doing right now."

Martha blinks, still stuck on the beginning bit of Rose's answer. "So you two aren't... an item?"

Rose laughs, not unkindly. "Life doesn't give you do-overs," she says. "Neither of us are the same people we were when we met up first, and that's not a bad thing. Oh, word to the wise, if you ever meet them, they go by Donna, not the Doctor."

And Martha's relieved, for reasons she can't even let herself look at, so she says, "It's not like we've had a lot of chance for small talk, what with dreams and saving the world and all that."

Rose cocks her head, maybe listening to something Martha can't hear. "You want to go out for drinks?" she asks.

"I have to. My mum is," and she can't finish it, can't find any convenient familial excuses to escape (escape from what, Martha? Be practical, here).

"Come on, sweetheart. It's just a bloody pub, not an alien planet."

And so Martha lets herself be pulled along to a bar she hadn't visited before, that served drinks bigger than she knew what to do with.

"I'm not used to doing this," she confessed, on the patio, with one and a half drinks behind her. "I mean, it's not like UNIT goes out for a round after work."

Rose leans over to the side exaggeratedly, and Martha realizes that she's sitting on the edge of drunk. "Can't go get hammered and telling the civvies about Are 51, can you?"

Martha giggles, belatedly realizing that she might also be a little less than sober. "When I'd go out with my mates, in medical school, we'd play a game where we saw if we could still recite the names of the bones drunk. Whoever forgot one had to take a shot."

Rose leans over closer to her. "That's awful," she says. "Can you still do it."

Martha puts a hand to her chest in mock indignation. "Of course I can," she almost shouts. "Wouldn't be a proper doctor if I couldn't!"

Rose holds on to the tip of her ring finger with exaggerated delicacy. "What's this one, then?"

"It's my distal phalanges," and as Rose moves her hand up the finger, she says, "The medial phalanges - oh, now you're at the proximal phalanges."

Rose stops for a moment, laughing. "You're having a go at me, aren't you? There's no way there's so many of them, all called the phalanges!"

"Mmmhm, there are." Rose holds her palm in another warm hand, and Martha has to interject, "Slow down! There's five bones in the palm, and you've got your fingers over all of them."

Unheeding, Rose moves her hand up her arm, and Martha has to keep pace. 

"You've got the radius and the ulna here, on two different sides, and now you're at the humerus and oh-" because Rose is merciless, because her soft hand is going up and up Martha's arm, because she's almost at the shoulder now, and Martha doesn't know what to say.

"Uh, that's the scapula. The-the clavicle. My idiot brother broke his falling off a swing, ha ha."

Rose's fingers follow the bone in, sweeping down from her shoulder towards the hollow where the clavicles met in the middle. "Sternum," Martha says, almost choking, not understanding where this is going.

Rose's fingers slide up her neck, cupping her jawbone, and her eyes are dark and serious. "And this?" she asks, and Mara can see her flush carrying down her neck and into the neckline of her shirt, and she wonders absently how far down it goes.

"That's my mandible, my jawbone," Martha breathes - and she can't take her eyes off Rose's lips, just barely parted, and the hate she felt at the beginning comes rushing back, only it isn't hate, it was never hate to begin with, was it - and Rose Bloody Tyler leans forward to kiss her.

Her lips are so soft it almost shouldn't be allowed. Martha wants to open her eyes, to look at Rose's dark lashes up close, but she's too far gone and, oh, Rose slips her tongue gently into Martha's mouth and it's all she can do to keep her head.

Rose Tyler kisses like someone with a lot of practice.

When Martha pulls away, she can see the sparkle in Rose's eyes, and she says, "Oh," because a lot of things suddenly make more sense to her.

"Oh," she says, again, and buries her head in her hands. "I'm so bloody stupid. I thought I hated you!"

Rose laughs, not unkindly. "We're all stupid sometimes, sweetheart. Even doctors."

She snakes her hand around Martha's shoulder, pulling her in beside her, hand resting over her torso.

"First and second ribs," Martha announces, and Rose is off in gales of laughter that Martha joins after a while, both of them laughing into the darkness.

Up above them, there's stars, even in the middle of London.

***

The millionth time Martha sees Rose Tyler (or something like it, she hasn't exactly been counting), she takes her to see her family, her messy, ridiculous, bighearted family, and Rose loves them.

Afterwards, Leo gives her a big speech about how happy he is for Martha, and how he'll be her big brother no matter who she fancies. Tish tears up, and launches herself forward into a big hug, almost crushing every one of her ribs. 

And her mum, her mum who isn't one for emotional displays, just sniffs and says, "I like her better than that Doctor fellow you were going on with. Seems like she'll be much less trouble."

But Martha remembers the hot golden light she sometimes sees in Rose's eyes and her wicked grin and the way has of pulling Martha away on adventures, and doubts it.

**Author's Note:**

> I don't even have feelings about Doctor Who anymore, but when Billie Piper said that Rose was bi, it resurrected my "Baby Bi Martha Jones" feelings with a furious passion. Anyway, Rose Tyler and Martha Jones made me gay, so I figured I might as well return the favour.
> 
> (this was written in 1 night with 0 of my usual editing. why won't the Writing Idea Goblin let me Rest.)


End file.
